


Glass-spun

by glim



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Captain America: The First Avenger, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 07:23:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13185168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: The mark appears that night. Tiny, faint, pin-pricked blue alongside the faint blue of his veins on the inside of his wrist.He doesn't tell anyone.





	Glass-spun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snottygrrl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snottygrrl/gifts).



The winter after Steve turns sixteen is the worst he can remember. He catches a cold in late November that turns out to be pneumonia by December. He spends the holiday season laid up in bed, staring at the endless grey-blue of the winter sky, waiting for his mother to come home from work, for Bucky to stop by on the way home from school or the way into work. 

Two weeks before Christmas, Bucky stops by with a deck of cards. He touches Steve's cheek, as if he were fragile, and Steve turns into the touch. When Bucky's thumb traces his cheekbone, Steve's chest squeezes tight and his breath catches in a new, uncertain way. 

*

The mark appears that night. Tiny, faint, pin-pricked blue alongside the faint blue of his veins on the inside of his wrist. 

He doesn't tell anyone. There's only one person he wants to tell, and Bucky smiles the same way the next time he sees Steve, touches Steve's cheek and brushes his hair from his forehead, as if the whole world hadn't somehow been crystallized into a cluster of stars and hope. 

The squeeze in Steve's chest is more painful this time when Bucky's hand brushes against his own. 

He doesn't tell anyone.

*

"It's the same," Steve says, and rolls his sleeve up. They're two days outside of Azzano and he's felt as if his heart were in his throat the whole way there and out.

Now, though, he has Bucky, pale and tired and _whole_ , next to him, a faint, blue pin-prick constellation of stars on his left wrist. 

"It's the same as mine," Steve says again, and rests his wrist alongside Bucky's. 

"You never told me," Bucky says, and he's not angry, not at all, but Steve almost wishes he were, because instead of anger, hollow sadness fills his eyes, his voice. "You never--" 

"I never told anyone. And you never--" 

Bucky shakes his head. He frowns down at the mark on his wrist, and then traces it with the edge of his index finger. "Wasn't there before, not until I left home." 

Sadness, and the inimitable urge to put his arms around Bucky and hold him comes over Steve, fills him from someplace soul-deep inside him. He touches the side of Bucky's face, fingers the edge of his jaw, keep his touch careful and light, as if somehow the past few years have spun a glass-fine gentleness between them. 

"But maybe I knew," Bucky says. "Maybe, somehow, I knew, and I didn't need any mark on my body, or any sudden bright spark in the sky." He tips his head up to look at Steve, and the sadness clings to his words, but there is something else there now, too. 

Something fine and bright, spun-glass and the blue-grey of the winter sky. He smiles, soft and certain, and rests his hand on Steve's, draws the palm to his lips. 

When Bucky kisses Steve, he kisses the palm of his hand first, and his lips are a warm press; when he kisses him again, he rests his lips over the mark on Steve's wrist and he murmurs a quiet promise there. 

"I knew, I know. I've always known it had to be you, Steve." 

Soul-deep, spun-glass, fragile and certain, a spark of light in the New York summer sky, and the grey-blue of countless winter afternoons. 

Steve leans in to kiss Bucky: his forehead, then over both eyelids, to feel the flutter of Bucky's lashes against his lips, and then, then, he leans in closer and kisses him true and deep. Bucky unfolds beneath him, lips parting, breath sighing, and that sigh isn't of hollow sadness, but relief, and then, Steve knows as Bucky kisses him back, pleasure.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic fills the "Soul Bonding/Soulmates" Square on my Round 9 Trope Bingo Card.


End file.
